Abstract

The pervasiveness of the platform model is spreading rapidly in post-industrial societies. We are used to focus on this organizational transition mainly in for profit business, but what happens when the process of platformization concerns welfare services? The article presents the results of a comparative analysis about 5 case studies of digital platforms in local welfare services. In particular, we analyzed how the peculiarity of the organizational design of local welfare services cope with the new platform architecture, gathering the direct testimony of the managers involved in this transformation process. The results show how the transition to the platform model in the welfare services clashes with some organizational resistances but also with the specificity of the care sector which assume peculiar features defined as «quasi-platform».